Racial-profiling study discussed at meeting of Kalamazoo Public Safety officers, community members

Jacqueline Fullerton listens to Washtenaw County Sheriff Jerry Clayton talk Saturday about the racial profiling study currently in progress by the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety.Nicholas Grenke | MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette

KALAMAZOO, MI – Members of theKalamazoo Department of Public Safety and community leaders met Saturday to discuss a racial profiling study that is currently being conducted at the police agency.

Officers and residents spent more than five hours talking about the challenges facing the community and their interaction with Public Safety.

“This is a question of an officer’s use of discretion,” said Washtenaw County Sheriff Jerry Clayton, who led the meeting, which was held in in the Radisson Plaza Hotel & Suites in downtown Kalamazoo. “We all violate traffic laws.”

Officers and members of the community spent time in small groups to talk about themes such as defining racial profiling, and what their expectations were of the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety.

Clayton said that traffic violations are a random event that should be in proportion to the general population statistics in a given community. The study is being conducted in different areas around Kalamazoo where the race and ethnicity of residents can vary greatly.

Once the community data has been collected, it will be compared to the race and ethnicity of motorists in traffic stops at those locations, according to John Lamberth of Lamberth Consulting, the Pennsylvania firm that is conducting the study.

Some community members and police officers voiced concerns Saturday that data from the survey could be skewed by police officers who want to appear unbiased. However, the goal of the study is to look at systematic issues, not individual officer’s data, Clayton said.

“We are looking at the perception of the officer,” Lamberth said. “Is it perfect, no — but we have some leeway in the study.

“The error rate is relatively small,” Lamberth added. “Many officers are not trying to perceive the ethnicity of whom they pull over.”

Officers will have three “boxes” to check off for ethnicity: white/Caucasian, black/African-American and Hispanic. Clayton said that although there are other ethnic groups in Kalamazoo, they are a much lower proportion comparatively throughout the city. Officers also have the option of checking “unknown” under the race category.

The racial background of the police officer conducting the traffic stop will not be part of the statistics that the consulting group will study, Lamberth said.

“One of the things we don’t know in the community is what you’re thinking in the way of your training,” Charles Warfield said to Lamberth.

Warfield, a former president of the Metropolitan Kalamazoo Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, added: “There are a lot of mixed race people out there.”

Clayton said the majority of what officers would record corresponds with the way drivers would identify themselves if asked.

The goal for Saturday's meeting was for police officers and community leaders to have an opportunity to interact with each other face to face, Kalamazoo Public Safety Chief Jeff Hadley said. The meeting was by invitation and not open to the general public.

“I’m very encouraged by today,” Hadley said. “We’re talking about serious subjects that are not easy to discuss with each other.

“You’re always better served by these conversations,” he added.

Warfield said the study was worthwhile.

“It would seem to me that it’s a good thing, the whole question of who you're stopping becomes front and center on an officer’s mind,” he said.

The data collection will conclude at the end of February, Hadley said. The study, which costs about $100,000, is expected to be released by June.

During the question-and-answer period with Clayton, one officer said that if the study shows racial profiling occurs in Kalamazoo, critics will say it was obvious and the study was a waste of time. But if the study doesn't find evidence of racial profiling, critics will say the data was flawed.

Even if the survey does conclude that racial profiling is not an issue in the city of Kalamazoo, Clayton said that it won’t be the end of the subject.

“You may have an experience that fits under racial profiling,” Clayton said. “The survey doesn’t invalidate that situation.”